scholarly journals Investigating How Design Concepts Evolve in Engineering Students

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dawidow ◽  
James Huff ◽  
Keelin Leahy
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Concepts

Function Ordering Within Morphological Charts: An Experimental Study

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anant Chawla ◽  
Joshua D. Summers
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Design Space Exploration ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Space ◽  
Space Exploration ◽  
Integrated Design ◽  
Input Function ◽  
Output Function ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Morphological Chart

Morphological charts are widely recognized tools in engineering design applications and research. However, a literature gap exists in instructing the representation and exploration of morphological charts. In this paper, an experiment is conducted to understand how morphological charts are explored and what impact functional arrangement has on it. The experiment consisted of two problem statements, each with five different functional arrangements: 1) Most to Least Important Function, 2) Least to Most Important Function, 3) Input to Output Function, 4) Output to Input Function, and 5) Random. Sixty-seven junior mechanical engineering students were provided a prepopulated morphological chart and asked to generate integrated design concepts. The generated concepts were analyzed to determine how frequently a given means is selected, how much of the chart is explored, what is the sequence of exploration, and finally the influence of function ordering on them. Experimental results indicate a tendency to focus more on the initial columns of the chart irrespective of functional order. Moreover, the Most-to-Least-Important functional order results in higher chances and uniformity of design space exploration.

Understanding Customer Needs in Designing Automotive Center Consoles

2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (18) ◽  
pp. 1686-1690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivek D. Bhise ◽  
Rashad Hammoudeh ◽  
James Dowd ◽  
Marc Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Industrial Design ◽  
Foam Core ◽  
Customer Needs ◽  
Parking Lots ◽  
Center Console ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Summary Data

This paper presents results of two studies conducted to determine customer needs in designing future center console designs for automotive products. The first study involved an observational survey of 150 vehicles in three parking lots to determine what items people store in their vehicles and the item locations. The data obtained from the survey provided a list of all the stored items, their distribution and their locations inside the vehicle. Papers, bottles, cups, books, bags and sunglasses were most frequently observed items in the vehicles. The second study was conducted to determine storage preferences of items in the center console. A foam-core center console with velcro surfaces was built inside a minivan. Thirty-six drivers were asked to select items that they would carry most often in their vehicles and place them on the center console surfaces. The resulting layouts of stored items were summarized. The summary data were provided to four teams of industrial design and engineering students to create design concepts for future automotive center consoles.

How Function Ordering Within Morphological Charts Influence Exploration1

2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anant Chawla ◽  
Joshua D. Summers
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Design Space Exploration ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Space ◽  
Space Exploration ◽  
Integrated Design ◽  
Input Function ◽  
Output Function ◽  
Design Concepts

Although morphological charts are widely taught used tools in engineering design, little formal guidance is provided regarding their representation and exploration. Thus, an experiment was conducted to elucidate the influence of functional ordering on the exploration of morphological charts. Two design prompts were used, each with five different functional arrangements: (1) most-to-least important function, (2) least-to-most important function, (3) input-to-output function, (4) output-to-input function, and (5) Random. Sixty-seven junior mechanical engineering students were asked to generate integrated design concepts from prepopulated morphological charts for each design prompt. The concepts were analyzed to determine the frequency with which a given means was selected, how much of the chart was explored, the sequence of exploration, and the influence of function ordering. Results indicated a tendency to focus upon the initial columns of the chart irrespective of functional order. The most-to-least-important functional order resulted in higher chances and a uniformity of design space exploration.

The Impact of Team-Based Product Dissection on Design Novelty

2014 ◽  
Vol 136 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine A. Toh ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller ◽  
Gül E. Okudan Kremer
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Current Design ◽  
The Impact

Although design novelty is a critical area of research in engineering design, most research in this space has focused on understanding and developing formal idea generation methods instead of focusing on the impact of current design practices. This is problematic because formal techniques are often not adopted in industry due to the burdensome steps often included in these methods, which limit the practicality and adoption of these methods. This study seeks to understand the impact of product dissection, a design method widely utilized in academia and industry, on design novelty in order to produce recommendations for the use or alterations of this method for supporting novelty in design. To investigate the impact of dissection, a study was conducted with 76 engineering students who completed a team-based dissection of an electric toothbrush and then individually generated ideas. The relationships between involvement in the dissection activity, the product dissected, the novelty and quantity of the ideas developed were investigated. The results reveal that team members who were more involved in the dissection activity generated concepts that were more novel than those who did not. In addition, the type of the dissected product also had an influence on design novelty. Finally, a positive correlation between the number of ideas generated and the novelty of the design concepts was identified. The results from this study are used to provide recommendations for leveraging product dissection for enhancing novelty in engineering design education and practice.

scholarly journals A NOVEL DESIGN COMPETITION FOR THIRD-YEAR CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENTS

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janaka Y. Ruwanpura
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Construction Material ◽  
Successful Outcome ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
University Of Calgary ◽  
Design Competition ◽  
The University ◽  
Novel Design

At many Canadian universities, there are few courses for design education in the civil engineering curriculum except in fourth year. This paper explains an innovative approach introduced by the author to promote design education using a design competition at the University of Calgary. Through this design competition, third-year students learn design concepts and apply them using a real project, integrate several civil engineering deliverables in one project without doing them in a separate course, and gain experience that prepares them for their final-year design course. The eight courses included in the competition comprise all civil engineering aspects, including structural, geotechnical, transportation, environmental, construction, material, and project management. This inaugural year’s design competition is based on the new Alberta Children’s Hospital Project. The paper discusses the competition’s purpose, structure, student participation, deliverables, and successful outcome.

scholarly journals DESIGN-BUILD PROJECT APPROACH IN A FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING DESIGN COURSE

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Platanitis ◽  
Remon Pop-Iliev
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
First Year ◽  
Complex Objects ◽  
Project Approach ◽  
Three Dimensional Objects ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Design Build

We found that first-year engineering students often have difficulties to visualize and manipulate three-dimensional objects mentally, especially if the assembly involves multiple parts that need to work together in sequence to produce a required function. Ultimately, this lack of ability leads to poor representation of intended students’ design concepts in paper sketches, as well as poor or unacceptable detailed designs in CAD. Therefore, it is imperative that students develop their ability to manipulate complex objects in space very early in their academic careers. In this context, this paper focuses on the introduction and implementation of a challenging design-build project in the first-year engineering design course at UOIT intended to provide students with early opportunities to physically realize the spatial relationships and the three dimensional causality of the interaction of moving parts in an assembly.

scholarly journals A study on the effects of example familiarity and modality on design fixation

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vimal Viswanathan ◽  
Megan Tomko ◽  
Julie Linsey
Keyword(s):  
Energy Source ◽  
Design Problem ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Feasible Solution ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Design Fixation ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Novel Design

AbstractDesign fixation is a factor that negatively influences the generation of novel design concepts (Jansson & Smith, 1991). When designers fixate, they tend to reproduce example features or features from their initial ideas. In order to mitigate design fixation, it is crucial to identify the factors that influence the extent of design fixation. This paper investigates two such factors: the modality of examples and the familiarity of designers with the example features. To investigate this, an experiment is conducted with mechanical engineering students who were asked to generate ideas to solve a peanut sheller design problem. The students generated ideas in five different experimental conditions: control, where no example was given; the first example given in a sketch form; the first example given as a nonfunctional prototype; a second example in sketch form; and the second example in a working prototype form. The first example was a nonfeasible solution, but it contained several features familiar to the participants. The second example was a feasible solution, but it contained less familiar features. In order to understand the extent of fixation triggered by the examples, three metrics were utilized to compare across the experimental conditions: the quantity of nonredundant ideas generated by the participants, the presence of example features in their solutions, and their fixation to the example's energy source. The results showed that in the case of the familiar example, the example modality did play an important role in the extent of design fixation. Across the examples, it was found that the first example containing several familiar features caused more fixation than the second one. Overall, this paper shows that the modality in which the example was communicated and the presence of familiar features in an example influenced the fixation caused by those examples.

scholarly journals THIRD YEAR INTEGRATED DESIGN PROJECT FOR THIRD YEAR CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENTS

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janaka Ruwanpura
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Construction Material ◽  
Integrated Design ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Design Project ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
The Third ◽  
Design Competition

There is a lack of courses for design education in civil engineering curriculum except in fourth year at many Canadian Universities. An innovative approach introduced and implemented by the author to promote design education at the third year using a design competition at the University of Calgary was very successful. Student learned design concepts, applied them in the third year using a real project, integrated several civil engineering deliverables in one project without doing them in a separate course, and gained experience to get ready for their final year design course through this design competition. The eight courses included in the competition comprise all civil engineering aspects including structural, geotechnical, transportation, environmental, construction, material, and project management. The lessons learned by implementing the competition for 2 years, the author suggests a new idea to introduce a third year design project for civil engineering students. The paper discusses the purpose, structure, student participation, deliverables of the new idea.

My Idea Is Best! Ownership Bias and its Influence on Engineering Concept Selection

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine A. Toh ◽  
Arti H. Patel ◽  
Andrew A. Strohmetz ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Concept Selection ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Final Design ◽  
Process Factors ◽  
The Impact

Concept selection is considered one of the most crucial components of the engineering design process because the direction of the final design is largely determined at this stage. One of the most widely utilized techniques for filtering designs during this process involves informal review meetings where team members identify the designs that most closely satisfy the design goals. While this is often seen as an efficient process, factors such as ownership bias, or an unintentional preference for an individuals’ own ideas, and team member personality attributes may impact an individual’s decision-making process. However, few studies have explored the impact of these factors on concept selection. Therefore, an empirical study was conducted with 37 engineering students in order to investigate the effect of these attributes on the selection or filtering of design concepts in engineering education. The results from this study show that personality impacts the proportion of ideas selected, and that male students tend to select more of their own ideas (ownership bias) than their female counterparts who more often select their team member’s concepts. These results add to our understanding of the factors that impact the team concept selection process and provide empirical evidence of the occurrence of ownership bias in engineering design education.

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